Planet of the Orange-red Sun Series Volume 4 Difficillis Exitus

Onboard a space ship, a group of women lived in a self-sustaining world they called Madiera, which they believed was nothing more than a world. Two robots, Alpha and Beta, ran the ship, totally behind the scenes. In fact, the designers of the robots and the space ship initially built them to save part of their disintegrating world. The goal: take a group of survivors and found a new world. Sorely, that plan ran into difficulties. After four hundred years, still the robots had not yet found a suitable new planet. Worse, when the original world was destroyed, only a few hundred women had been brought onboard. No males. The robots improvised, creating unique methods for women to had children, girls only, since there were no Y-chromosomes available.

Initially, the original women did not adapt well to their unusual situation. Seeing their home world destroyed, many began committing suicide, completely the opposite goal from the robot's programmed survival goals. With the entire project about to fail completely, the robots genetically modified the women, removing their hands. That ended their in-fighting and suicide attempts. Next, the robots constructed a multitude of "bots" to assist the survival of their load of women. From dressing bots to door bots to farming bots, these robot devices made life easy and simple for the human passengers. However, to keep the women happy, Alpha and Beta also reviewed all known data about women on their original world, slowly implementing what they perceived as the optimum appearance for the women, as well as endowing them with special abilities, as appropriate for the four Kindred: Fire, Air, Earth, and Water.

As the story begins, a group of young teens graduate from high school and embark into the world of adults. The trouble facing Alpha and Beta is simple. They are running out of raw materials to replicate and repair the thousands of life-sustaining bots. Marisol and her group discover that the bots are failing and then make the startling discovery that their world, Madiera, is actually a space ship run by Alpha and Beta. The two robots enlist their help in finding a new, habitable world before the ship runs out of fuel and raw materials and every human dies. They face a difficult exit.

They land on Ashford-5 in secret and meet up with personnel from Brom Tower, where it is now the year 1201, in the sixteenth year of the rule of Emperor Jan Bellweather and Empress Amy Blackwater. However, Carmen Valen, the only person on Tierra who knew just who Amy and Jan were, wanted revenge. The pair had allowed her to continue to run Elegant Fashions Inc in exchange for remaining silent about their identities. But Amy and Jan also face a difficult exit from being the emperor and empress. If they just step down, the world would revert back to the savagery they'd worked so hard to stop.

Brom Tower kept a constant lookout for alien ships landing and kidnaping more telepaths. Hence, they spotted the shuttle from the Madiera ship as it landed, in search of more raw materials for the giant space ship. In this fourth tale, both the women of Madiera and Amy and Jan find their exits. Amy and Jan's exit involves the creation of a secret Underground, where all their equipment and monitoring system are kept and used to keep the aliens and Valen Tower under control. Their exit to a private life in Brom occurred in 1204; thus this novel covers only a few years.